The Kumamoto District Court ruling last week clearly recognized that the government's policy of segregating Hansen's disease patients — which was maintained for nearly 90 years until the Leprosy Prevention Law was finally scrapped in 1996 — exposed not only the patients themselves but their family members to serious discrimination and prejudice that caused irreparable damage to their lives. Instead of trying to evade its responsibility, the government needs to face up to the damage done to the lives of relatives of the patients and take long overdue remedial steps.
The lawsuit on which the Kumamoto court handed down the ruling was filed by more than 500 kin of former patients of the disease, who called on the government to pay ¥5.5 million in compensation to each plaintiff. The court awarded a total of some ¥376 million to 541 of the 561 plaintiffs in the first judiciary decision holding the government responsible for the plight of the patients' relatives under the segregation policy.
While the government offered an apology and compensation to the former patients after the same district court ruled in 2001 that the segregation policy — which was pursued without medical grounds — was unconstitutional, it has refused to accept blame for the hardships suffered by the patients' families. Since the relatives of the former patients took their case to court in 2016, the government maintained that the segregation policy did not apply to them, and that the prejudice and discrimination against the patients likewise did not extend to them.